Namaste – Ni Hao

 I have to admit that I am not great with languages, even though my social circle at university believed that you were not really educated if you could only communicate in one language and speaking English and something else didn’t count as being bilingual. The only language that operates completely in, is English with German coming a distant second (I speak it well enough to be understood and I can read and write in German but a very basic level.) I can, if push comes to shove, get by in conversational Cantonese (it’s the language I used with my paternal grandma) and Mandarin (thanks to Donald Trump and Brexit, I realized that having some capability of Mandarin would be sensible). However, I am not multilingual and when compared to the guys I was closest with at university, I am a lout.

So, to cover the fact that I am uneducated lout who is only operational in English, I developed something of a means of covering this inadequacy – I learnt key words in many languages. So, whilst I don’t speak anything much other than English, I know how to pepper a conversation with many phrases from different languages, thus sounding more intelligent that I actually am.

Interestingly enough, this “party gag” of mine seems to work exceedingly well in Singapore, which is officially proud of educating a “bilingual population.” I remember attending a Saudi National Day function and dropping the various Arabic expressions (mainly the ones relating to God). The Saudi’s seemed to appreciate the fact that I was using what little I knew of their language in the right context but more importantly, I actually received an email from a young lady who worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gushing over my command of the Arabic language.

This dropping of “foreign” words into the conversation took a particularly interesting turn tonight at a networking function I attended. Ran into an Indian lawyer who works for an international law firm. Although I don’t speak Hindi, I watch enough Bollywood movies to pick up a few words and so I proceeded to use what I had picked up from Bollywood cinema on this chap. Managed to break the ice. Then, he proceeded to do one better by admitting that although he’s ethnic Indian, he’s actually a citizen of Hong Kong and it turns out that his “other languages” are Cantonese and Mandarin.

What both of us concluded was the fact that using a language other than your own is a great opener. I think of a speaker at my lower sixth current affairs who mentioned that people become more receptive towards you when they see that you are trying to reach out to them on their terms. I’ve always kept that in mind and although nearly all my negotiations in life are in English, I try, from time to time to say something in another language. It gives the other side the impression that I do understand them.

 

 Copyright Hays – When you make the effort to communicate in a language other than your own, you demonstrate a willingness to meet the other side on their terms.

I’ve found this especially true in two particular scenarios. The first comes from my days in the Bistrot when European customers came in and I could greet them in German, French or Italian. I like to think that this made me stand out as an Asian boy who realises that White People are actually more than a single group only capable of speaking English and I was rewarded with customers who spent a lot of money with me.

The second area comes when I deal with foreign workers in my day job. These guys are usually in a pickle by the time they see me. Dropping that odd word or two in Bengali or Tamil helps give the impression that I am prepared to try to understand them.

There is a caveat to this and that is that only works when it comes to a language that nobody expects you to speak. My new friend had a similar life experience growing up. Everyone expects him to speak Hindi. Nobody expects him to speak Cantonese or Mandarin. The same has been true for me. Nobody expects me to know a European language other than English. Nobody expects me to know anything of Arabic or Hindi. Everyone expects me to know Mandarin or, much to my Mum’s annoyance, everyone in Singapore thinks my natural state is Hokkien (minus the usual curse words).

Still, that’s no reason not to try and make the effort to communicate in something other than what you’re used to. Linguistic chauvinism has to be the stupidest things around since cigarette smugglers voted to leave the block that made their trade legal. I think of all the idiots yelling “SPEAK ENGLISH – you’re in……” with a sense of pity because it’s a sign that your mind is limited and that is definitely not something to be proud of.  

Will You Give This Up Over One Slap? – Blood Sisters

 

I recently finished watching a Nollywood film called Blood Sisters, which centred around two best friends who ended up running from the law because they killed the finance of one of them, who happened to be abusing her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9sSydb5ec8

 

 The key driver in the story is the fact that the abusive finance is from a powerful family – powerful enough to tell the police what the conclusion of their investigation should be and they know that if the matriarch of the family chooses to make them disappear, the police would happily oblige. The power of this family is such that when the girl who is being abused tells her mother that she can’t go through the marriage because the guy has been hitting her, the mother proceeds to tell her not to be selfish because her father’s business depends on the man’s family and the fact remains, the girl will be “taken care off” in the material sense. Her mother’s line is “will you give all this up over one slap.”

If you look at this incident in this Nollywood series, you’ll realise that the human being has an incredible ability to tolerate abuse if he or she believes that there’s a material benefit and the line “All this over one slap” can applied to anything. In Singapore, this problem is most commonly found in the are of migrant labour. Every justification for mistreating migrant workers works along of the line that whatever we’re doing (unsafe transportation, unsanitary living conditions etc) are just “one slap” and the jobs that the migrant workers do and the salaries they are paid is the “all of this” in the equation.

Generally speaking, the argument covers a lot of things. Migrant workers do put up with their lot in life because they are getting “all of this,” and are not going to complain about “one-slap.” Since nobody complains, everyone assumes that the situation is not abuse.

However, what nobody seems to understand is the fact that just because nobody complains about a situation, it doesn’t mean that the situation is alright. In the show, the situation starts when the girl tells her finance that she won’t marry him because her best friend has the made the point to her that if she forgives her finance for “one-slap” it will be a lifetime of slaps for her.

The question is inevitably where does the line get drawn and in the case of “abusive” behaviour, it usually doesn’t stop at “one-slap,” and it’s been found that if wounds from abuse are left untreated, they inevitably fester and the problem ends up worse. Take the issue of unsanitary conditions in the worker dormitories as an example. The unsanitary conditions in the dorms are the proverbial “one-slap” that the workers put up with because they are getting “all of this” in return. Since nobody complains, nobody deals with the underlying problem. When Covid hit, the dormitories proved to be breeding grounds for the disease and the government has struggled to get the situation under control (so much so that the Minister of Manpower still won’t enter a dormitory unless he’s in a hazmat suite).

We need to find a way of understanding that issues don’t go away because nobody complains. We need to understand that when people complain, they are doing us a service by pointing out that underlying issues exist and need to be addressed. Changing the culture that listens to criticisms is not rocking the boat but ensuring things constantly improve.    

Is There Something to be Thankful For?

 I’m going to turn 48 around 11 hours times and given that my birthday is the time that American family and friends celebrate Thanks Giving, I thought I would try and bash out a piece to see if there’s anything to be thankful for.

So, what makes me qualified to talk about things to be grateful for? I believe that my central qualification is that I am what you could politely call a “loser” in the grand scheme of things. At the age of 48, I am past the age of climbing the corporate ladder and I continue to look forward to an old age of shuffling along trying to collect cans to make ends meet in my old age, that is assuming I don’t die of a heart related ailment. Yet, I keep going and instead of killing myself, I accept that I should go on because things may not be as bad as they seem.

In a way, my personal outlook is being justified in the world today. Sure, there’s a lot to be upset about. Prices of just about everything are going up and the only thing not going up seems to be going up is salaries. Just as an example, when my current employer moved into our current office in 2014, coffee was 90 cents a cup. It went up to a dollar in 2015 and then a dollar ten in 2016 and stayed that way until the start of this year when it jumped to a dollar thirty.

Yet, despite the gloomy economic outlook, it looks like people want a more rational world. Even the “fascist” like party that took power in Italy is trying to look and sound rational. The raving lunatics generally did not well, as was most noticeably seen by the American mid-terms when irrational election deniers were denied seats in Congress and Governor Mansions across the country.

The greatest sign of something to be grateful for, came across the Causeway when a corrupt former Prime Minister went to jail, another former Prime Minister who had spent his days plotting and scheming ended up losing his deposit while the former dissident ended up taking the top job. Will Mr. Anwar be able to deliver? If you look at the precarious nature of Malaysian politics and the fact that the Malaysian general election was undecisive, it might be a miracle if Mr. Anwar even survives to the end of the year.

However, there are signs that Mr. Anwar knows what needs to be done. He has made the right noises about politicians needing to remember they serve the people and he’s chosen to lead by example by not taking a salary.

The basic economic situation around the world is glum. However, when you see voters in democracies around the world rejecting the politicians who preach the politics of anger and blame in favour of those who talk about unity and getting through tough times. No matter how bad things get, there’s always something to give thanks for when people look at solving problems rather than assigning blame.

 

 Copyright – Daniel Miessler

“Good Guys Win – Even if the Road is Longer and Harder” – Datuk Vinod Sekhar, Chairman and CEO of Petra Group.

 

Taken from the Linkedin Page of Datuk Vinod Shekar.

I’m Singaporean and so it becomes a little challenging to admit it but something miraculous happened in Malaysia. It’s challenging to admit because, generations of Singaporeans have grown up with the notion that we’re simply better than our cousins across the Causeway. We’re like the pretty girl that can walk into a room and without trying, gets every guy turning his head just to get a glance at her. Malaysia, by contrast, is our elder sister, who despite having lots of advantages, never seems quite able to get guys interested in her and when we talk to our cousins in Malaysia, we tend to be like that pretty girl who felt sorry enough for her older sister by arranging a date with one of our rejected suitors.

Its especially true when it comes to the topic of politics and law. Say what you like about the Singapore government but Singapore politics is wonderfully boring. You know the results of every election before it even happens and as former Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean once said, “In Singapore, what you see is what you get.”

Malaysian politics by contrast, is colourful. For over 50-years, the same party won the election and politics was dominated by prominent characters in that party. Corruption, which is officially “non-existent” in Singapore is a given in Malaysia and whilst Singapore made it a point to know that it was “regardless of race or religion,” Malaysia has proudly favoured one ethnic group over the rest.

However, this has been a year for the older sister to show the younger sister a thing or two. First, Malaysia saw to it that its former Prime Minister Najib Razak will go to jail for plundering the country. Mr. Najib was the enabler of the now infamous 1MDB scandal and he was probably the only world leader who tried to explain that the US$700 million in his personal bank account was a donation from another nation. The jailing of the once untouchable Mr. Najib showed that the rule of law was working. Even the most powerful was being held to account.

Then, there was the fact that Dr. Mahathir, Malaysia’s longest serving Prime Minister was voted out and lost his deposit. The good doctor, who is 97, has been a force in Malaysian politics over three decades. Dr. Mahathir is credited with bringing up the Malaysian economy but he has been accused of being the architect of the system of patronage that was abused by Mr. Najib. The Malaysian voters had grown tiered of the good doctor and showed him the exit by the most effective means. His electoral defeat showed that the voters were willing to get rid of people regardless of who they were.

Then, there was the fact that Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister has finally bee sworn in a Malaysia’s Prime Minister. Mr. Ibrahim is what my former client, Mr.Vinod Sekhar, called a good guy. Mr. Ibrahim was once a rising star in Dr. Mahathir’s government and seen as a potential successor. However, when the Asian Financial Crisis hit, Dr. Mahathir turned on him and sent him to jail on trumped up charges of sodomy (forbidden in Islam – Mr. Ibrahim being known as a devout Muslim). Mr. Anwar Ibrahim spent the next 30-years of his life moving in and out jail, fighting legal challenges as well as fighting the political battles.

While it might be a stretch to call this Malaysia’s “Mandela” moment, the fact that a former political dissident can get to the top job by sheer persistence is encouraging. It is a case of it doesn’t matter who you are as long as you work hard.

 

 Then, there’s the unsung hero of this situation. In this case it is the King, Sultan Abdullah of Pahang, who brought the politicians together to work out a unit government. Malaysia’s king, like his British counterpart, is a constitutional one and his powers to do things are limited. Yet, when there was a hung parliament, he managed to gather the politicians together to get them to form a government.

Sure, Malaysian politics has been colourful. However, the system has been toughened and institutions like the courts and parliament and the monarchy have been tested. One has to ask, would we, on this side of the Causeway be able to pass the tests that have afflicted the Malaysian system?

Greed isn’t always Good

 One of the greatest lines from a movie comes from Michael Douglas’s most “infamous” character, Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street.” Mr. Gecko became the poster boy for the 1980s “money” culture when he announced “Greed is Good.”

To be fair, there is a logic in what Mr. Gekko says. People who want to get things generally go out and work for them. The more people want things and chase for them, the more economic activity you get, which in turn drives that most precious of things – economic growth.

However, Mr. Gekko has been proven wrong on quite a number of occasions. The “greed” that he praised in the 1980s has been the foundation of some of the most prominent screw ups, such as the recent collapse of FTX. Greed, it turns out, has the power to dull the ability of otherwise intelligent and logical people into making rational decisions.

The case of FTX is the prime example of how greed isn’t good. One of the most prominent points about this case is the fact that a group of highly intelligent and experienced professionals like the folks at Temasek Holdings getting screwed by an obvious con job. As a Singaporean, the only small comfort available to me is the fact that Temasek was in distinguished company. Blackrock, the world’s most famous investment fund was also involved.

What makes the “con” at FTX so interesting is the fact that all the warning signs were there. The company, one of my current employer’s former directors said on a Linkedin post, had no controls”

 

The following Youtube video elaborates on the “mess” that was FTX’s financial controls and it explains how “investors” was sold on something that looked very glitzy but was in fact a complete mess:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJn6IiYid6A

 

 If “pension” money of the elderly wasn’t at stake, this would be funny. A young kid managed to take a lot of money from institutions with not just money but with centuries worth of knowledge about investing.

Let’s take the most obvious. There was no one doing accounts. No CFO or Financial Controller. Sure, its understandable if a mom-and-pop shop don’t engage doing a professional accountant. However, this wasn’t a mom-and-pop shop but a multibillion-dollar organisation. Surely, you would expect them to have someone in management who was responsible for the accounts.

The warning signs were there and you don’t actually need a degree to know that they were warning signs. Let’s face it, the two most basic functions of any business are the accounts (someone has to got to know what’s going in and going out) and the human resources (you need people to do things). Yet this multibillion enterprise didn’t have either department. You don’t need a spread sheet to know that something is wrong.

Yet, institutions like Blackrock and Temasek went ahead and plonked their money with something that should have screamed “scam.” It becomes even more unforgivable in the case of Temasek Holdings in as much as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) did not give FXT a license to operate.

This is currently an ongoing case and we are discovering more. What has already been said is that this is probably one of the worst frauds ever, as the following report says:

https://www.afr.com/technology/a-complete-failure-of-corporate-controls-ftx-s-new-boss-20221118-p5bzb4?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nc&utm_source=LinkedIn#Echobox=1668748567

There was an obvious lack on controls in FXT’s side. However, the question should be on the lack of controls in Blackrock and Temasek. Didn’t one of the bright young things in these organisations spot that there was something screamingly wrong? Or was it a case of management choosing to ignore warnings from underlings because the figures being presented looked wonderful?

Greed is not good. It has been the cause of lost fortunes. Greed has the power to make successful and powerful people disregard the intelligence they must have made to become successful and powerful. Greed then makes the gullible even more so. Lives have been ruined by this very worst of emotions.

We should always remember that while Mr. Gekko was a great character in a movie and embodied many of the things we’ve been told to aspire to, he ended up in jail for worshiping greed.

“I don’t want to be known as the CEO who brought Chrysler back from the Dead” – attributed to Robert J Eaton, former CEO of Chrysler

 

You could call it a coincidence that in the midst of the news from the Malaysian General Election, which saw Malaysia’s Prime Minister in Perpetuity, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad lose his seat and the deposit, an old friend of mine sent me an article about the return of Mr. Bob Iger, returning as CEO of Disney and asked me for my thoughts. The article can be found at:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bob-iger-is-returning-as-disney-ceo-in-a-huge-shakeup-065239929.html

While the results of the Malaysian election and Mr. Iger’s return to his old job, might seem unconnected, they both illustrate one of the key problems in brand management for the age of instant news. Both Mr. Iger and Dr. Mahathir are giants to their respective organisations, so much so that as far as most people were concerned, Mr. Iger was Disney and Dr. Mahathir was Malaysia. Mr. Iger lead Disney for a long time and through a very successful period and you could say that the same was true for Dr. Mahathir, who is Malaysia’s longest serving Prime Minister and the man credited with raising Malaysia’s economy from third-world resource dependent to a credible one.

Both men had developed personal brands that were reflected in the bands of the organisations that they led. The personal and the corporate/country brand seemed to enhance each other and to an extent, everyone seemed happy with that.

Then, there was the fact that neither was succeeded by someone who was a capable steward of the company brand. Mr. Bob Chapek, who was both Mr. Igar’s successor and predecessor as CEO of Disney ended up being blamed for the fall in business at Disney’s theme park and film distribution business. For Dr. Mahathir, he had Abdullah Badawi who only lasted half a decade and Mr. Najib who brought government corruption to a level worthy of a Hollywood movie (which was what happened when 1MDB fund were used to fund the Wolf of Wall Street).

When Dr. Mahathir returned to his old job in May 2018, he was regarded as something of a saviour who would help Malaysia return the glory of his first administration after being plundered by Mr. Najib. There is some hope that Mr. Igar will return Disney to its old magic.

Now, there is nothing wrong with a superstar leader returning to the organisation he or she once led. Steve Jobs for example, was ousted from Apple in 1985 and then came back in 1997, where he transformed Apple from needing cash from its great rival, Microsoft, into one of the most valuable companies in history (Apple is the second company in history to have a market capitalisation of over a trillion dollars and in any given quarter from 2011 onwards, Apple has been either the most valuable or second most valuable company in the world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization )

In sport, there is the example of Graham Henry, who coached the All Blacks during their worst ever world cup performance in 2007 (first time New Zealand failed to reach the semi-finals) but held onto his job long enough to win the tournament in 2011 (prior All Black coaches got the sack when they failed to advance in the World Cup).

So, second chances are not a bad thing. Both Mr. Jobs and Mr. Henry went onto use their personal brands to enhance the brand of the organisations they lead. Former, long-serving leaders know the system and by extension know what needs to be done. Mr. Jobs for example, knew Apple had a great culture of innovation but needed to know where to focus its energy and he knew how to stir Apple the right way. Prior to announcing his illness, Mr. Jobs had the good sense to find a capable successor in Tim Cook and saw to it that there was distance between his personal brand and the corporate brand. There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Igar returning to Disney if, like Mr. Job, has an idea of where he wants to bring the company.

However, the problem with long serving leaders is that there is a tendency to forget that they are only human and prone to human failings. Having their brand infused with the organisations has a way of making them forget that the organisation needs to be greater than them and as they say, you need to have an idea of where you are going to take the organisation and you got to deliver results. Mr. Jobs created incredible value for Apple shareholders in his second stint leading the company, hence nobody ever said anything about Mr. Jobs making a return to Apple.

The same cannot be said for Dr. Mahathir in his second stint as Prime Minister of Malaysia. At best, you could say that Dr. Mahathir did cancel some of the more extravagant of Mr. Najib’s era but that was pretty much it. In the end, the voters saw an old man who whilst feisty, was more interested in political horse trading to secure his power rather than making life better for voters.

 

 What did he do with his second chance? – copyright CNN.

While there’s nothing wrong with being given a second chance, one needs to use it to do more than during the first stint. If your interest in only yourself, the people who gave you a second chance will be considerably less willing to let you back in.

“I was married to a Prince and he Broke My Heart – So, Now, I’m looking for a Frog to make me Happy” – Diana Princes of Wales – based on the Netflix Series “The Crown”

 

I just finished the latest season of the Crown, which was centred on the British Royal Family in the 1990s. Much of the action was centred around the late Princes Diana and the collapse of her marriage to then Prince of Wales (who is now the King).

What made this particular season intriguing was the fact that it was the time when the public had to accept that the royals were not living in an idyllic world and behaved pretty much like the rest of us. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was particularly noteworthy because both parties decided to air dirty laundry in public and royalty went from being a fairytale made real into a soap opera being played out on the news.

While fairytales are wonderfully idyllic, soap operas have a way of fascinating us in as much they have an element of relatability to them. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was presented as a fairytale of the pretty princess getting married to a prince to live with happily ever after in a palace. However, it turned out to be rather different. They had nothing in common and proceeded to make each other miserable and as far as the public was concerned (and remains so) was the fact that the prince cheated on the pretty princes with a frumpy girl. It took a while for people to accept that fairytale everyone wanted wasn’t a fairytale for the people actually involved.

Much has been made of the fact that the prince ended up getting married to the Frumpy girl who was in fact the love of his life many years before he met the pretty princess. However, at the time, the real interest was in the love life of his ex-wife. While much was made of the fact that she was the one that was “cheated on,” she wasn’t exactly saintly either. There was, for example, a bodyguard, a riding instructor and captain of the national rugby team. However, these were sold as an emotional reaction to the fact that the prince was cheating on her and nothing more was made of it. It was only when she met the film producer who happened the son of a billionaire shop owner that everyone started wondering if she had suddenly found happiness again.

However, after her death, it appears that the “romance” may have been more of a rebound from someone who had actually walked away from a chance to be part of the “fairytale orbit.” What’s more interesting is the fact that the person that she was actually in love with was a normal guy working in a normal job.

Dr. Hasnat Khan, the man who the late Princess described as “Mr. Wonderful,” is a heart surgeon. His only claim to fame is that cricket legend and former Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is a distant relative. Other than that, there is nothing particularly headline grabbing about Dr. Khan.

Yet, despite this, all accounts seem to indicate that he was the one that the Princess was most in love with. An ordinary doctor got the most “desirable” woman on the planet to fall in love with him and then, the accounts are such that he ended it because he realized that he was not interested in living in the spotlight that she was addicted to.

 

 Normal Guys do win…..Copyright Entertainment Tonight.

Most of us are told fairytales when we are children. Someone tells us that there is an aspiration to live for. Guys are told that the ideal woman is a pretty princess and girls are told that the ideal man is a handsome prince. Hence, we look certain ideals in life partners. In Singapore, we even talked about the necessity of the 5C’s (cash, credit card, car, condominium and country club membership) as an aspiration in one’s self and in partner.

Everyone has an ideal of what success is. There is a social definition of success like Singapore’s 5Cs. Too many people get caught up in trying to match up with the fairytale life that society sells them. You get people making loads of money in the rat race but have no life beyond working 24/7 and hardly see friends and family. I think of the number of people who happily go into debt to show they have the fairytale symbols of success. The question remains – is their life really a fairytale or is it a soap opera.

When the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the world saw a fairytale made live. However, the truth was, it was not a fairytale for the people involved and instead, we got a soap opera. The prince found his own fairytale with a frumpy girl and the man who gave the most happiness to the Princess was an ordinary man who avoided the limelight. Much can be learnt from this.

“Top Line is Vanity – Bottom Line is Sanity”

 

The big news in the world of business is the collapse of the crypto currency exchange FTX. The collapse has wiped billions off the value of crypto currencies and investors have been sent scrambling for cover to lick their wounds. In Singapore, the collapse has been double compounded by the fact that Temasek Holdings, one of our sovereign wealth funds (technically Temasek isn’t a SWF but acts like one), was a prominent investor. A lot is being said about the collapse, so I shall not dwell into what happened. However, a recap of events can be found at:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/crypto-exchange-ftx-bankrupt-whats-happening-sam-bankman-fried-binance-3069096

While I shall let the more intelligent deal with the collapse of FTX, I will make the point that it appears that FTX is part of a larger trend in the world of business. Back in the day (1990s), I remember being told by a very senior banker that business at its most basic was simple – you bought a product or service at “x” dollars and sold it for “y” and then kept the difference. Everything in the world of business was about helping increase the difference between the buying and selling.

Just as the basic concept of business was simple, so was the basic concept of accounting. There was the top line, which was your “revenue” or how much you sold of your product or service. Then, there was the bottom line, or your “profit,” which was what you had left after you paid off the expenses (rent, salaries, stationary etc).

Based on this concept, it was said that businesses would only see a profit after three years of operations because they would have to take the time to get their product or service known at a scale where they could make money. Then, after surviving long enough, that business might grow to the level where it would be attractive enough to get people wanting to invest in it. The investors would then pour over the financial statements because the story what was going on was there. What did investors look for? This was best answered by a few years back when I ran into a mainland Chinese customer who asked how much the Bistrot would be sold for. I told him the owners asking price and gave him an indication of what our revenue was from two branches. His next question was “what’s the profit?” This was something the owner was not willing to disclose and so the deal didn’t go through.

 

 Where the businesses biography is written?

Interestingly enough, the basic concepts of business and accounting started to change in the 1990s with the arrival of the internet. This was a time when everyone was talking about how the internet would change business. This was not wrong in the sense that the internet had the ability to change the way things were done. Small businesses could overcome geographical hurdles and team up with businesses from elsewhere. The Indian IT and call centre business started to grow in this period because it became easier for Western companies to get cheaper Indian labour to do certain task, which they could then resell at Western rates. Western companies grew their margins and a new industry grew in India.

However, the one thing that changed was the nature of business. The “internet” hype created a new way of doing business – find something – hype it up as the latest thing around and then get the Venture Capitalist to pump in money and on IPO day, everyone would be popping champagne.

There was a reality check at the start of the millennium with the dot com crash and old economy businesses started to take over the once sexy dot coms. One only has to think of AOL, which bough Time Warner and ended up as a subsidiary of Time Warner.

However, this reality check seems to have been forgotten. We’ve seen a number of “rock star” CEOs of start ups who were supposed to make and create billions on the stock market because they had the latest and greatest business idea. However, a number of these CEOs and their IPOs have come crashing down. Before FTX there was “WeWork,” which failed in its initial efforts to lift because there were questions of its business model. Here is a list of failed IPOs.

https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/ipos-that-failed/

There are companies coming up with revolutionary technologies, which will need financial backing and will, if backed, make fortunes for their investors. However, companies brining out such technologies also need to get their business models correct, which in turn means ensuring that they really have a product or service that will live up to their promise. Investors must also examine the companies they putting money into. Fortunes will be made but only for those who are capable of looking beyond the hype and understanding what they are investing in. Top line and CEOs drumming up their achievements makes good headlines but one should check the rest of the P&L statements before putting money with today’s business heroes.    

They Exist

 

One of my weekend treats was to pick up a John Grisham novel called “Gray Mountain,” which focuses on a young New York lawyer who gets retrenched from her big law firm and ends up working in the Appalachian Hills. Although I’ve only started the first few chapters but the book has already painted a wonderful picture of how a former “real estate” lawyer dealing with billionaire property developers suddenly discovering people who have no jobs and domestic violence is a way of life.  

This fictional account of a Wall Street lawyer in Appalachian country underlines the fact that America isn’t a single country but many countries, where people from different parts of the country have totally different experiences from other people in the same country. This is also not unique to America. Here in Asia, there are plenty of examples of countries that are in fact many countries. Like in America, the difference is largely centred on the urban-rural divide. For example, when everyone talks about the Chinese economy and the great wealth in China, they are thinking about the shinning metropolitan centres of Shanghai and Shenzhen. What nobody thinks of is the rural areas where people have been so busy worrying about getting flour to make soup to bother knowing about what goes on outside their village.

Being a multitude of places isn’t limited to large countries like the USA or China. Even small places like Hong Kong and Singapore are many countries as opposed to being one unified block. If anything, the difference between the various communities in small places like Hong Kong and Singapore appear more pronounced than they are in large places. A Wall Street banker will most likely never have to look at someone from the Appalachian hills in the course of their daily lives. Here in my work place in the centre of Singapore’s financial district, you have the slick residents of condo-land walking past the aunty from one-room HDB heartland trying to sell them tissue paper just to pay her utility bill.

Countries like people, want to show the world their best side to the world and wanting to “gloss over” certain realities is understandable. It becomes even more pronounced of places what need the outside world and governments in such places go through great lengths to “gloss up” their image. My stepfather, once made a point that he would only fly airlines of small but wealthy countries because the national carrier in such places were extensions of national pride. Airlines like SIA, Emirates, Cathay Pacific and Qatar consistently rank among the world’s best because they are part of their native lands that governments want the world to see.

In the case of Singapore, everyone gets to see Shenton Way or the Marina Bay sands. These are iconic images and one they are very nice. I admit they are great to look at and very pleasant areas. One of my great after work pleasures is to walk from Shenton Way to the Marina Bay Sands casino and towards the bus home.

 

 However, as much as these places are nice, its important to remember that these places do not paint an accurate picture of what Singapore is. One of the most visible signs that Singapore isn’t just the glitziest place of Crazy Rich Asians comes in the form of the elderly cardboard box collectors.

 

 It is, without a doubt, easier to show off the Marina Bay Sands than it is the number of elderlies collecting cardboard boxes. I also get wealth-inequality. I spent my student days in London, where Daddy had a flat in Soho and I had friends who lived in South Kensington. Money wasn’t an issue most of the residents. However, there was inevitably an army of homeless people waiting for you to give your spare change.

However, unlike what I saw in London, where the tramps were young and had probably taken a few bad turns with drugs, the ones in Singapore are inevitably old and they’re begging but doing physically demanding work for criminally low money.

Nobody seems to talk about this group. If you read official news in Singapore, you are bound to think that Singapore of Crazy Rich Asians is the only Singapore. However, while we may all like to think that, this isn’t reality. I look at my work on Shenton Way and the box collectors and its not far fetched to think I may end up experiencing a different Singapore in my old age.

We need an honest conversation about what is Singapore. Like it or not, the one-room flat dwellers are as much a part of Singapore as those on the top of Marina Bay sands The conversation should move from how to do we get more people on top of Marina Bay Sands to ensuring that Singaporeans, particularly the elderly ones don’t need to collect cardboard boxes in their twilight years. We do so much to create an image but that image can only be sustained if people feel some reality of that image.  

Never Knew they Were Worse Things than Dying

 

Met up with a client from Australia and we both remembered that it’s “Armistice Day,” or the day when the armistice that ended the first World War was signed. At the time, the First World War had been the bloodiest and its end seemed like a nightmare for a continent that at the time pretty much controlled the world.

When I grew up in the UK, “Armistice Day” was something that one just took for granted. It was understood that you simply looked sombre on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month as a mark of respect for a generation that spent years in the most awful conditions being gunned down because the royals of Europe had a family tiff (the Russian Czar, the German kaiser and the British King were all cousins). I grew up being told that this was a generation that sacrificed so that mine could enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy today.

I could get the message on an intellectual level but it was never an emotional connection. I thought of it as a particularly British thing that didn’t really have much to do to the rest of us in the colonies. Ironically, it would take coming back to Singapore, which doesn’t commemorate the occasion, serving in the military and seeing a friend come home in a body bag for me to fully appreciate the significance of the end of this war.

One of the things that I believe that not enough of us fully understand is that war and conflicts are a waste. They waste natural and economic resources and more importantly human resources. The futility of war is best summed up in an Australian Song called “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” which describes the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI

 

 The two of the most prominent points in the song are when the main character states that he never knew that there were worse things that dying and then, later in the song, goes onto to say that the young keep asking why the old guys are marching for and he admits that he wonders the same.

I believe these two points are things that most of us have forgotten when it comes to war. Firstly, death is actually not the worst thing that can happen to people. If you take out the religious connotations associated with death, the guy who dies doesn’t have worries. He’s just a corpse who doesn’t suffer any pain or have any stress. The real horror is suffered by those who don’t actually die but suffer from physical and mental ailments.

Then, there’s the second point is why are people placed in positions where they risk having to suffer the various mental and physical ailments that come from conflict. Yes, I do get the importance of fighting to defend yourself. I do get the fact that there are awful situations where the choice is kill or be killed.

However, how many of the conflicts on the global stage are down to the awful choice of kill or be killed? How many “conflict” situations in one’s personal life are actually kill or be killed?

The people in power understand this and hence they produce dubious emotional reasons to get people riled up and willing to fight for whatever the powers that be want them to fight over. This notion was best satirised in the novel “Gulliver’s Travels” when the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu go to war over which side of the table an egg should be broken.

Let’s always remember that the people who seem most interested in getting into fights are usually not the people doing the fighting. The generation that saw the horror of World War I tried to avoid similar bloodshed but failed and we got World War II. After that, the world came up with the UN as a body to regulate conflicts from getting too big and the EU was created to tie French and German interest so closely together so as to prevent conflicts. However, its been nearly seven decades since the last global conflict and we now have a situation of nations around the world electing chest-thumping eunuchs who need to find their masculinity by sending other people to die.

War is rarely necessary and in an age of rising nationalism, it become even more important for us to teach our kids to be more sceptical. When someone tells you to be angry at a group or person, so angry that you need to get into a fight, one should always ask for the real agenda. Why do you want me to hate this group or this person? What have they done to me? Ask – “how have they harmed me to the point where it becomes necessary to take up arms and wipe them off the face of the earth.” Remember you’re putting your life and your kids life at stake, so its up to you to make sure that the sacrifice is necessary.

Don’t Make it Up……

 

A while back it was reported back to me that a lady, I meet at a function had reported back that I had behaved in an overtly friendly way and had been constantly calling her up to go out to the best night clubs in Kuala Lumpur (KL). I laughed at this story because, while as much the person telling me this was trying to make feel I was being complained about, I knew it wasn’t true. Yes, I met the young woman at a function but I never spoke to her long enough to exchange business cards or to ask for her number or for a link on social media.

Like or not, we live in an age of social media. News travels faster than we can imagine. The truth of what people believe is often based on whether it’s something that resonates with us or whether we like the person giving us the information rathe than what it actually is. Thanks to social media, the easiest thing to talk about in the most amplified way is people. Hence, unless one is living under a shell, one is bound to be talked about as much as one will be talking about people.

As someone who has worked in media and publicity for the better his working life, there is some good news. The good news is that lies are easy to spot and debunk if you act fast. So, if there’s a rumor floating around cyberspace that you are partial to eating gerbils, you have two options. You can either laugh at it and ignore it or jump in and set the record straight.

Telling lies is an onerous enterprise. On an individual level, telling lies requires you to remember who you lied to and what you told them. It gets complicated because in order to avoid getting caught, you not only got to remember what you said that person, you also have to watch what you tell people who might tell that person you lied to. The effort is such that one is, sooner or later bound to get caught. One only has to watch the 1984 movie, Miki and Maud, about a man who has two wives and struggles with what he tells each of them – in the end he collapses on the series of lies he’s built around his life with each of them.

It gets more complicated as the scale of the lie increases. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, two regimes that had issues telling the truth to people, had to build sophisticated propaganda machines that eventually broke down when reality burst through. The political regimes built on “lies” need to control information. There is a reason why the internet in North Korea is severely restricted while South Korea has the world’s fastest internet.

However, this is not to say that lies only exist in places with dubious political regimes. The fact is, lies are very plausible in places that are officially open to a free flow of information and the sophistication does not come from the heavy hand of the censor but in the effort that it takes to make the lie as plausible as possible.

This is best illustrated on the Netflix series, “Marcella,” which tells the story of brilliant detective who suffers from various psychosis. In the last season, the titular character is sent undercover to infiltrate a family of criminals. Her cover story is that she’s a former policewoman and there is a scene when she’s asked to help the family cover up a murder. Her advice is that the witness testimony must be as identical to the actual event as possible.

 

Copyright Amazon UK

Her argument is that you tell the truth as far as possible but leave out or embellish certain details. When most of what you’re saying is true, it easy for everyone to remember and tell a credible story that people can believe. The “cover-up,” comes from the slight details that are either omitted or embellished. These are the slight details that nobody thinks of in the general narrative but are crucial to the “truth.”

The best lies are effectively 90-99 percent the truth. There is such a thing known as honest people telling lies because they don’t know they are telling lies. When 90 plus percent of what you are saying is true, you are more likely to believe yourself and the bodily signs of lying (increase in heart rate) won’t occur.

All good scams are credible on the surface. The scam element usually involves a high degree of probability and the scams only get caught in the minute details. Good forensic work involves looking for the crucial details that the ordinary person would have no reason to spot:

 

 Would you know this if you were not told?

We live in an age where information flows freely and its easy to treat information as something personal where you see credibility in the people that are likeable. However, there is all the more reason to be skeptical about every piece of information that one receives. Those who are skilled in the art of scamming understand our desire to believe certain things and they know how to exploit our need to believe. They are getting better at giving the appearance of credibility and if governments want to protect their citizens from scam artist, they will need to ensure that the population has a healthy dose of skepticism towards everything.